Crossing the Boundaries of Religion and Culture

Review and Reflection on Acts

(Main source: Martin Aaron in the book "Popular Scientific Journals Biblical Forum")

"Church regard the Bible not only as a collection of historical documents ... but primarily as the Word of God is addressed both to himself and to the entire world today. This fact raises faith efforts actualization and inculturation of the biblical message and also the various attempts to use biblical texts in worship, in lactio divina, pastoral ministry, and in the ecumenical movement".

     The opening sentence of the last chapter of a Catholic Church document on the interpretation of the Bible in the church, the Bible interpretation placing of science in the context of broader business and major. This effort addressed by two complementary terms:-actualization and inculturation (also called contextualization). This business takes place not only in theological reflection, but also in various pastoral praxis. Important note also that this business is not viewed as an internal activity for the sake of the church alone but as a task for the entire world today.

    Below is the author wanted to show that the contextualization of the Word of God is no longer new, having been started by the Bible itself. This prompted us to perform similar actions. We are moved by the story continues to hold the Bible to reinterpretation about the word of God into new contexts. Contextualization effort illustrated the beginning of the easiest is from the Acts of the Apostles, the book is perhaps less attention in the study of theology today. With a very interesting book describes how the first century of preaching the gospel constantly crossing the boundaries of culture and religion. This crossing of the more interesting story because it illustrates again the beginning of a small mission church in the middle of the wider community of the Roman Empire, a mission similar to our mission as a small minority in the middle of a large Indonesian community. However, this mission will also differ when viewed from the angle of religious environment. Environmental Hellenistic polytheism and syncretism is not the same world with the environment of Asia's great religions present in our society. Such differences should be considered in re-reading of Acts in our situation.

     In understanding the Acts of the Apostles as a cross-cultural stories in religion, the author was assisted by Howard C. Kee's in his book Theology of Acts. The author uses the fourth chapter of the book entitled "Reaching out Across Religious and Cultural Boundaries" (Kee, 1990: 42-69). While tracing some of the Acts of the Apostles from the point of contextualization of the Gospel in the world of Hellenistic news, authors will also propose some points of reflection about its meaning for us in the context of Indonesia today. In this case we also owe a publication of the WCC, spirit, the Gospel, Cultures (Langerak et al., 1996), and articles of theologies of Asia / Indonesia, which will be called at the time.

"As a final note, please read the next posting which is a continuation of this writing some of them are: Starting from Jerusalem, Hellenistic Involving People, Reaching the Samaritans and the eunuch, Repentance, call, or the transformation of Paul?, Reception nations began through Peter, Reaching further, geographic, ethnic, religious, and cultural, agrees on the principles, encounter the gospel with the Graeco-Roman society and dialogue between the Gospel with Greek philosophy".